Original Case V-42 knife as issued to members of the First Special Service Force (Black Devils). Click the image to enlarge. Source: http://www.fairbairnsykesfightingknives.com/case-v-42.html

In lofty halls, forked tongues entwine the words of conflict,At once invoking the name of War whilst insisting the SoldieryStand upon the field for reasons otherwise.That a Soldier exists as the bloody finality of his Nation’s tolerance is forgotten.

In a world at war, such as ours, those who speak loudest of their desire to visit violence upon others are rarely those who actually know how to do it. And then the Soldier returns from the field, bent and cracked in a few places, misunderstood and feared by the same people. The lessons of the past are either long forgotten, or “remembered” in a rebranded form, only to be viewed as through a glass, dumbly.

Things are spiraling toward a sharp period of adjustment, and if that’s not an inspiration for poetry, I don’t know what is.

In the early years of World War II, the forces of Nazi Germany had become punch drunk with success, having come to regard all resistance as little more than a speed bump on the road to world domination. The debacle of Dunkirk in 1940 left Great Britain bloodied and horribly weakened after the loss of so many trained men and their vital equipment, and Germany in a position to prepare for its next invasive foray, this time across the English Channel.

Into these dark times, when victory was but a glimmer of hope, came unorthodox and heretofore unthought of responses designed to maximize battlefield effectiveness with the minimal resources available, and as we wend our way through November of this year, I will be spotlighting three of them.

Here is but a taster.

I wrote of the First Special Service Force, AKA the Devil’s Brigade, AKA the “Black Devils”, on the Remembrance Day of 2015 with my poem Black Devils. Two days ago I read that poem to a client who happens to be a blood relative to a member of that force, and instrumental for many years in facilitating interconnection between long lost members, collecting the stories of members living and departed, and organizing reunions for living members and families of those on both sides of the veil. All so nothing these Men did will ever be forgotten, rebranded, or trivialized as little more than a glorification of war.

After hearing the poem, she asked permission to read it before the assemblage at the next reunion in Moncton, New Brunswick. With the greatest of honour and humility, my blessing was unreservedly granted, and a written copy provided.

With that in mind, here again is Black Devils. We’ll be talking about then again in the coming days.

Black Devils

By LFM

Six comrades sit beneath the moon,
Through anxious hours ere comes the sun.
Dawn will find but three that live –
We’ve taken every other one.

We find you where you seek repose,
We find you where you stand on guard,
We hunt you as you hunt for us,
And leave you with our calling card.

We Devils black who hunt by night,
You never see nor hear us come.
Your vanguard of the “master race”
Now lives despair, with fingers numb.

So any morn you see the sun –
It doesn’t mean we’ve dropped the fight.
That’s just because we let you live
To bleed for us another night.

Believe the grin from ear to ear
Your comrade wears ‘neath lips struck dumb,
And heed our mark upon his brow.
Believe – The worst is yet to come!